"The Cascades" is the popular name of the Government establishment at the top of Macquarie street, a short distance below Degraves's brewery, and which embraces the Gaol and House of Correction for females, the pauper establishment for males and females, and the reformatory for boys. The premises consist of a somewhat irregular range of stone buildings, situated in a well-sheltered valley, close to the Hobart Town rivulet, down whose bed the water runs clear and unpolluted by the filth cast into it when it enters the more populous part of the town. As we have before stated, it is in a well-sheltered valley, and at the same time it stands away from any centre of population, while in the immediate vicinity, and connected with the establishment, there is as much land as could be cultivated if the place were full of inmates, and all were set to work at agricultural pursuits. The large hill that rises immediately behind the buildings renders the place very picturesque, and can be seen plainly from all the yards in the gaol. This slight glimpse of the outside world must be grateful to the prisoners, and take off a good deal from the dull monotony of nothing to look at but the walls around, and the sky overhead.
The first part of the establishment that our reporter was shown over was the House of Correction for females, in which, there are at the present time 78 female prisoners serving sentences in accordance with the magnitude of their crimes, which range from vagrancy to wilful murder. In first entering the female gaol the visitor goes into a large yard, round the sides of which there are buildings used for various purposes. All the women sent to gaol with infants under 12 months old, and all the women who give birth to children while in gaol, sleep in separate quarters, and have very comfortable rooms provided for them. Two or three sleep in each apartment, and every necessary convenience is provided for both mothers and children. The beds and bedding are comfortable and warm, and a dim lamp is kept burning all night in each of the rooms. There are 26 young children in the House of Correction now, whose mothers are inmates, and there is no doubt that every one of them is better cared for, and more tenderly reared, than would be its lot were it outside the gaol walls. The mothers are also well cared for, as far as is compatible with the punishment they have to undergo, and each woman who has a child to nurse, gets what is known as full hospital diet, that is, a full supply of good and nourishing food. There are several dormitories for the reception of women who have children with them, and leaving these we next come to the shoemakers shop in which three male paupers and one prisoner make all the shoes required for the Cascade establishment and for the Queen's Orphan Asylum. Further on there are other sleeping apartments for the women and children, and a bath- room in which there are some large troughs which are used as baths. Into these the youngsters are dipped every morning.
Passing by what is called a "day room" in which the prisoners go during the day occasionally, and a large store above it, we come to a neat little stone chapel, in which all the prisoners assemble daily for prayers and on Sunday for divine service, the men sitting in one part of the building, and the women and children in others. The services are held at different hours, and the Rev. Dr Parsons officiates for the Protestant portion of the inmates, and generally the Rev. Father Woods for the Roman Catholics. The chapel is a very substantial little building and was not originally intended for its present use, having been erected with some of the other buildings in the same part of the establishment by Mr Lowes for a distillery. He sold it to the Government some thirty five or forty years ago. Leaving the chapel, the next place visited is a carpenters shop in which any work required on the premises is done, and then we come to a school-room in which the children of the female prisoners, who are old enough to learn, are given the rudiments of school education, by one of the male paupers who receives a salary of four pence per day. Even in this little educational establishment there are bad boys and good boys, smart boys and dull boys, and the master seems to take as much interest in his pupils as many a pedagogue in the outside world. The kitchen is a fine large one with every convenience in the shape of ranges. A female officer has charge of the culinary department, and under her are two female prisoners who act as scullery maids and assistant cooks. All the cooking for the House of Correction and the female paupers is done in this kitchen, and at the time of our visit the women were in the act of preparing for the boys in the reformatory, what seemed to be a very savoury stew.
This completes the list of buildings in the first yard in connection with the House of Correction for females, and after passing through the mess room where the women dine, and the needle room in which those who have tasks of needle-work assigned to them, sit and sew we entered the wash-yard. In this yard all the government washing is done for the gaols, the different pauper establishments, and the hospital, and the women are kept pretty hard at work. There are sheds under which the women wash, and there are washing and wringing machines, and in fact all the appliances for getting the work done well and expeditiously. There is a small room in which are the coppers where the water is heated, and from this place there is a pipe to supply the female paupers department. At the back of the yard, where the washing is done, there is a drying yard, and in the event of the weather rendering out-door drying impossible, there is a room in which the clothes are dried by heating the atmosphere with steam pipes,. A great deal of private washing is done at the female House of Correction, and it is all kept separate from that done for the Government establishments. Several women are at work in the laundry in which the private washing is "got up," and it is turned out well and at a moderate charge. The prison cart calls for the clothes at the different houses every Monday, and the washing is returned on Saturday.
The sleeping apartments are not what would be called commodious, and their chief recommendation appears to be that when the occupant has retired to bed there is not the smallest danger of her falling out, the size of the room not rendering such an accident possible. There are no bedsteads at the Cascades establishment for the ordinary female prisoners, who make up their beds on the floors of their cells, and roll them up neatly before they go out to work at seven o'clock in the morning. On the door of each cell is the name of the prisoner occupying it, with the date of her conviction, the nature of her crime, the extent of the term of imprisonment she is to undergo, and other particulars furnished by the police. The prisoners are not known by their names, but on their admission to gaol they take the numbers of the cells allotted to them as their cognomens. Each female prisoner has to have her bed rolled up neatly, and her cell tidy by seven o'clock in the morning, and she then goes to work until eight o'clock, when she has breakfast. At a quarter to nine she attends prayers in the chapel, and then works until noon, which is dinner time. Work is commenced at one o'clock again, and kept up until half-past five, when, after the evening meal, each prisoner at- tends the chapel again for prayers. The women are all locked up in their cells by half-past six o'clock, and if they are not tired enough with their day's work to enable them to go to sleep at once, they have plenty of time for uninterrupted meditation upon their past lives and their intentions for the future. As will be seen from the dietary scale given below, the women receive a very good allowance of food, quite sufficient to keep them in health and in good working condition. Each woman receives per day, 1 lb. of bread, of a quality known as 12 per cent, half a pound of fresh meat with bone, half a pound of vegetables, three ounces of oatmeal made into two pints of gruel, and half an ounce of salt. This is the scale upon which the ordinary female prisoners receive their food, the women with children, as we have stated before, getting full hospital diet.
From the wash-yard there is a passage that leads to a part of the House of Correction known as " Division E," or the refractory division. There are four pretty comfortable cells here for prisoners who are under committal for trial, or under remand for examination. Women who have been tried at the Supreme Court and convicted, are, upon their arrival at the House of Correction, first taken to Division E, where they are kept for a certain period before they are allowed to associate with the others in the wash-yard. Division E is by no means a desirable place to live in. The apartments are small when a woman has to pass the whole day, or the best part of it, in them, and the light that is admitted through the gratings over the doors is barely strong enough to render at all easy the task of oakum-picking, at which all the prisoners are employed for a short time after their arrival at the gaol. At the time of our visit, each of the women confined in this part of the establishment had her allotted quantity of oakum to pick, and some were busily at work. When the door of anyone of the cells is opened by one of the officials, the prisoner rises at once, and steps to the front. It is wonderful to note how soon a woman upon her arrival in gaol will adapt herself to circumstances. In most cases tears and bewailings are not indulged in after sentence, and the regular system of living appears to have a good effect in rendering the mind calm. A woman who makes her first appearance in the gaol soon settles down to the oakum-picking, until the time comes for her to take her place in the wash-yard. There is a good deal of wisdom in the plan adopted of placing the new arrivals in the E division, for when they have been there for a short time a pretty fair estimate of their characters and their tempers can be formed, and as the wash-yard to most female minds is a much more desirable place than the oakum-picking department, the change from one to the other is no doubt looked forward to and appreciated. In this part of the gaol there are some dark cells for refractory prisoners in which there is scarcely a gleam of light, and then there is the dumb cell for women who make use of bad language. This cell is of the ordinary size, but is provided with four doors, through which no sound that can be made by a prisoner will penetrate. It is not often that this cell is occupied, but it has often proved useful. In the E division there are two rows of cells one above the other, and there is accommodation for a much larger number of inmates than are in the establishment at the present time. In another yard there is a row of ordinary cells which are merely used for the prisoners to sleep in.
In connection with the female House of Correction are a surgery and dispensary for the use of all the different establishments. Directly the prisoners arrive at the gaol they are taken to the bath room, where they receive a thorough washing, and are afterwards provided with a suit of gaol clothes, which are neat and comfortable, their own clothes being washed and stowed away until the discharge of the prisoner, when they are returned to her, generally in a better condition than when she arrived. The laundry receipts at the House of Correction amount to between £500 and £600 a year and this goes a great way towards the support of the inmates. At the time of our visit the women all appeared to be hard at work, and there was a striking difference in their appearance when compared with that which the same class of women present when outside the establishment. With a few exceptions the young women there look strong and healthy, and many of them are even cheerful in their demeanour. The whole of the gaol is scrupulously clean. There is not so much as a straw to be seen in either of the yards, and all the wood- work in the place is as clean as scrubbing brushes can make it, while the walls are all either painted or whitewashed. The very cleanliness of the place is looked upon by both officials and many of the prisoners, as a part of the punishment, and there is no doubt, judging from the condition in which some of the prisoners arrive, that the preliminary cold bath is looked upon us one of the worst parts of the sentence they have to undergo.
The expense to the country of the female House of Correction at the Cascades is, according to the last estimates laid before Parliament, £1,671 15s. 3d. per annum, and of this amount £740 10s. 3d. is paid in salaries, and £931 5s. for clothes, bed- ding, stores, fuel, light, provisions, and other necessaries. There is one great evil in connection with the penal system in all the colonies, and it is particularly noticeable at the Cascades, where there are always a large number of young women incarcerated, and the effect of the present system is that there is only a very remote probability of the sentences they undergo deterring them from a return to their former courses of life, even should they wish to become decent members of society. A girl goes to the gaol, and if she is there for any considerable time gets thoroughly broken in to hard work. Perhaps during the time she is serving her sentence she may determine to abandon her former mode of life, and leave the gaol door with the intention of trying to get a situation, or of getting away from the place. But she does not happen to have money in her pocket, and as a rule the first persons she meets are those with whom she was formerly associated, who have been looking forward to the expiration of her sentence with a view to her re-joining them. Food and lodging are necessaries; the girl has no money, and has the gaol taint upon her, that would prevent her readily getting employment, and in nine cases out of ten she returns to the life she led before she was imprisoned. This is not mere speculation, but is a fact that can be vouched for by the gaol authorities. The best way, in our opinion, would be to adopt a system that has worked well in the prisons in some of the American States, and let the prisoners earn so much a week while in gaol, the sum to be handed over to them upon their discharge. The presence of money in the pocket has generally a good effect on the mind, and would at any rate give discharged prisoners a far better chance of abandoning crime, and working for their living, while in the end the State would not be out of pocket. There would be a good opening for a Prisoners' Aid Society in the direction we have indicated, and we should like to see one formed. 4
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- 1TAHO: NS1013-1-45
- 2TAHO: NS1013-1-571
- 3TAHO: NS1013-1-45
- 4THE CASCADES - The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954) 30 December 1872: page 2
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